


The Green Light

by PerennialFall



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, Horror, Memories, Past Lives, The Resistance is back again (Alright!)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerennialFall/pseuds/PerennialFall
Summary: ‘He never thought much about the ashes of this city. He knew he’d lived there once. ‘Champion,’ they called him.’As he picks through the ruins of Hyrule Castle Town, Link delves into a past far beyond anything in living memory, with the help of a spirited guide.
Kudos: 28





	The Green Light

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a Linked Universe writer, however Wild and Twilight were the best terms I could come up with to identify the different Links.

He never thought much about the ashes of Castle Town. 

It was a dead place, long left behind, in a burnt tangle of old streets and forgotten roads. He knew he’d lived there once, in service to Zelda as a royal guard. He’d had a family. Friends. Acquaintances who’d passed him on his way to the shop to buy fortified pumpkins and a stick of goat butter. There were entire regiments he’d trained with; classmates, captains and generals he’d fought on his way up the ladder, until they dropped off, and there was only him at the top. ‘Champion,’ they had called him.

It was a meaningless title now. Champion meant little to the bones scattered beneath his feat in the soil. It was a life of indentured solitude he couldn’t remember deciding upon. But it needed to be done. It was as clear cut as the hunger that struck him in the dead of night, the fear that took him when cliff rocks slipped beneath his fingers, and the thunder in the steps of the Divine Beasts. Whoever he had been — that dead man inside of him, pulling the strings that steered him onto this reckless path — he was gone, along with the town.

The only truth was survival. And the dread that continued to bleed out from this place, as blighted as it was.

He wanders over the ruins, tasting the deathly residue stirred up by the last rain. The sun starts to sink. He’s never seen the glow of twilight over the charred city, where the malice once was so thick it consumed the sky. It’s eerily quiet. The splashes of colour around the edges — the pale blue mountains, green hillsides and red volcano in the distance — remind him of the life that once thrived here. But he finds it difficult to swallow. The poisoned earth contrasts the sky in the most sickening way, and his only thought is to grit his teeth and trudge forward. 

As the evening beckons, he shelters behind a wall, past a burnt-out door frame, and scours through his belongings for a flint. It’s instinctive. But it’s a conscious decision. The Yiga were leaderless and destitute. They craved their revenge on him the way his arrows craved the eye of a Guardian. He couldn’t play into the lifelessness of this city, not when there were traces of the calamity all around, reminding him of what he’d never known he’d lost. 

The torch flickers in his grasp. He lets himself be seen and then continues on, holding his breath as he listens. 

Eventually, his steps lead him to the heart of the ruins. He was always impervious, until he made it this far. 

He feels the air start to thin with the ghosts of the citadel, his memories lost alongside the generations who perished here. They claw at him from beyond the veil, glancing off his shoulders as they push, and shove, and scream his name louder than ever before. He has no fondness for the crumbled husk that stands in the centre of it all — featuring a collapsed wing on the royal family crest, and a circular barrier, where people presumably sat, and kissed, and laughed. Yet the sight of it hollows a cavity into his chest. His mind is blind to whatever his heart seeks to grieve in this place.

He brushes it off as best he can. A Champion was as powerless as any in the face of emotion, he tells himself. His title never shielded him from the loss of Mipha, Revali, Daruk or Urbosa. His fleeting visions of their love, and anger, and hard-won ounces of respect were gone forever — blotted behind a choking dark, their traces dispersed by the painful ripples of light that shot out from his hand. He snarls to himself and shoves them all away.

That’s when he sees it. 

He squints and feels all the hairs on his neck stand on-end. There’s something over there. Something small and weak against the orange light of the torch. Something faint and green, like the sun through the Faron trees. It’s no less chilling to look at than the luminous stones often etched into the cliffs. Against his better judgement, he extinguishes the torch. The night is moonless and damp, and he feels it rolling in as the last rays of twilight melt away. He holds his breath as it manifests.

An orb of cold, emerald flame dances over the ruined path, a glimmering centrepiece in this square of the dead.

Something about it feels… stronger now. And full of life. 

The orb starts to fluctuate, beating with something greater than all of the sorrow soaked into the earth, ensnaring his mind from the dangers around him. All he can think of is to let himself closer to it. He takes a step. The light jumps and chases away, and then trails back to him. It goes back and forth, and he hears slices of sound — like laughter and gossip in the streets — until it waits in the space between them. He bends an eyebrow and shuffles forward, his eyes blazing brighter and brighter with familiarity. 

Sword sheathed, he reaches out to touch it. 

It rests over his fingers, warming him like an old friend. He starts to glow. And then the feeling spreads, branching from his hand down his arm, into the entirety of his body. The reaction from his mark of the Triforce is instantaneous. He flinches on the spot, expecting the power to spill out in waves of agony, as it usually did. But… there was nothing painful in the transformation. No burning, or sensations of dizziness, which often took him when the air howled with that raw, earth-shattering power, unleashed outward instead of honed within. Only weightlessness.

As it takes hold of him, he closes his eyes, and hears the unfiltered mirth of a busy street. 

“Champion,” he hears, in his own voice. 

And then, his eyes open.


End file.
